EVERGREEN. It’s the best kind of content you can create for yourself because it LASTS. Taking the time to create a stockpile of content that you can use for months and even years to come can be a lifesaver–especially on those days when you just don’t have anything new to post, announce, or share. Having a stockpile of content also helps you fill in the visual gaps when you have a story you want to share with your audience but don’t know what image to post along with it.

You might be thinking “yeah, this sounds great and all, but I don’t have time to stockpile content”. Well, I am here to tell you that you DO and CAN create a stockpile of content with much less effort than you think!

Using Stock Photos

Using actual stock photos is one option for adding to your stockpile of content. It’s quick, simple and also may allow you to showcase more diversity on your feed than photos of you and your product alone. If you make handmade items and aren’t so sure about sharing photos that aren’t of your work, consider using stock photos to create more of a feeling or a “vibe” on your feed and to fill in gaps. There are more and more great sites out there with lots of images to choose from for free (Think Pexels, Canva, Unsplash, Stocksy United, and Offset). You may feel still feel that using images that aren’t yours (excluding things like quotes) can feel inauthentic. If this is you, I totally understand, I have shied away from using stock images for my social media platforms, opting instead to create my own imagery in “batches” to use when I need them.

Saving User Generated Content (UGC)

I am a HUGE proponent of stockpiling user generated content. I use an app called Regrann to save any images on social media that people share of my merchandise, my crochet patterns, etc. and save them in an album on my phone (or upload them to my cloud or external drive) to share later! Always be sure to ask permission before sharing other people’s photos, but most of the time if they tagged you, they already want to support you and will probably be more than happy about you sharing and tagging them back!

I want to make a note here on collaborations and micro-influencers. As a small business, if you can find ways to collaborate with other small businesses, you may have yet another way to produce additional content and get your work in front of new eyes! Consider trading with another company or maker in exchange for cross promotion. Both of you would get a product from each other, take photos of the product and send the photos to each other or post them on social in combination with your products. This is a great way to foster community on social media as well!

Micro influencers are smaller influencer accounts, usually with a few thousand followers (less than 10K) that you can offer products to for free or at a discount in exchange for them creating content using your products! I used to do this with my crocheted crop tops. I would reach out to yoga “influencers” on Instagram, offer them deep discounts on my tops in exchange for them sharing a few photos on IG in the tops that I could then re-post on my own feed and use to market the tops!

Doing Group Photo Shoots Once a Year

This is one of my favorite approaches! I love to get a few friends & local models together each year and have a few hours with them to play dress up in my inventory and take fun photos of each of my items that I will then be able to share over the course of the year. You can read more about how I plan and organize these shoots here.

Easy As ABCC’s… Always Be Creating Content!

Every time you are creating or working on something, shift your mindset and see it as an opportunity to create content. Your cell phone should be your best friend! You don’t need a fancy camera to take great photos for social media, it is more about finding the best light and using it to your advantage! You can read all about my tips and tricks for taking better product photos on my blog post here!

If you create jewelry, accessories, or anything that you can take along with you anytime you are out and about be sire to leverage these opportunities to take photos of your work in new places! Even If you provide digital services, get a few stickers made with your logo and slap them on your thermos or your coffee mug so that you can snap photos of it on that next outing or vacation to share on your feed. I love taking my cat cozies with me on my coffee to-go mug, even if it is just a trip to Publix because it allows me new opportunities to photograph them in a new way/place. I included a few photos below of the ways I have photographed me with my coffee cats in my office, at the lake, in my car, walking to work, running errands, etc.!

People might give you some funny looks as you stand in the parking lot trying to get the best lighting on you and your product but who cares? If it means less stress later because you will never wonder “what they heck am I going to post today” again, I say it’s 110% worth it!

Be sure that you are also taking photos & video clips of yourself working on new products! Consider going live on Instagram while you’re working, create a time lapse or boomerang, play around with the tools you have and have fun with it! These kinds of interactions really give people a behind the scenes connection to you and your brand! Now that you are taking more photos than you know what to do with it is time for the next step!

Get Your Sh*t ORGANIZED!

One of the toughest things I had to learn when it comes to creating “more content than I need immediately” is NOT to share everything immediately!!! This might be difficult when you get a really good shot but if you want this technique to work, you have to pace yourself and focus on CONSISTENCY and quality over quantity when posting. I RARELY post more than once a day. My goal is actually to post every other day, this gives me room to breath and plan but also gives me the ability to be consistent because I don’t feel overwhelmed. And because I take photos every time I am working on something, I always have something worth sharing on social media, now I just have to make the difficult choice of WHICH photo to share!

In order for this to work seamlessly, you need to get ORGANIZED and find the system that works for you! This may mean creating a special image album on your phone or, if you are dealing with larger image files (or lots of images), saving them on a cloud service like Google Drive or iCloud where you can upload photos quickly and easily from your phone and still have easy access to them when you need them! By always creating content, it’s much easier to get inspired and focus on creating captions that will connect with your audience!

Good Content Can Be Repurposed!

“But I already shared that photo last month/year” … Nobody is going to remember that but you!!! If you have a great image and want to share it again year after year, there is NO harm in that! This year on the 4th of July I shared a photo someone had taken with my red, white, and blue cat themed beer cozies that I also just so happened to share last year, but it was such a fitting photo and I had not taken any new images that seemed to fit the theme of the day and guess what? No one noticed. No one shouted from the rooftop that I was being unoriginal by posting last year’s photo! 🙂 So, this is just another great reason why it is so important to get organized and keep all of the good photos available for possible future use instead of trashing them once you have shared them once.

This also goes for other kinds of content like blog posts. Just because you wrote the blog 2 years ago, doesn’t mean you can’t share it again! I like to do a quick check to ensure the information is still correct and up to date, and that any links are still working but once you do that you can highlight old blog posts as a way to “fill in the content gaps” when you haven’t been able to create anything new!

My process for storing and organizing my photos is as follows:

• Take photos on my phone and keep them in an album called “Pink Sheep”
• Once I have shared them to social media, I upload them to my Google Drive, download them to my computer and sort them into folders on my external hard drive for safe keeping until I might need them again
• IF I take the photos on my digital camera, I will upload them to my computer, sort them into folders on my external hard drive and then put any of the images I want to use immediately onto my google drive so that I can access them from my phone easily to share to social media

The best thing you can do for yourself is to get organized. Find a system that works for you so that you can have what you need available when you need it without having to stress!

I hope you found these tips helpful! I will continue to share more tips and tricks here on my blog so be sure to subscribe and never miss a blog post!!!!

Remember, you can always connect with me on Instagram or Facebook! I love making new social media friends!!!

× The Pink Sheep ×